AN OUTSIDE VIEW

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...

Richard Murphy, the accountant and policy analyst, has just produced a video on the fallacy of the £20 billion black hole in government finances. It is worth watching, but can you spot the hole in his argument? Murphy is partly correct, but also dangerously misleading. He has forgotten that there is a fixed supply of some things, such as land, which all buildings require—homes, factories, shops and offices. Creating money too freely leads to a land price boom. This was the main long-term effect of Quantitative Easing. It sent house prices sky high.  The notion that unemployment is due to shortage of aggregate demand is the great Keynesian fallacy. If Murphy understood the idea of the NAIRU (the Non Inflationary Rate of Unemployment), which has been around since 1959, he would know that pushing money into the economy cannot get rid of unemployment without causing accelerating inflation. Money has lost 98% of its value since 1945. It is one of the reasons why Britain's industry has...

  This discussion arose from a YouTube comment. “Keep operating super old locomotives is not exactly environment-friendly or even cost-efficient.” This is true as a broad generalisation. However, the energy consumption of rolling stock and infrastructure has to be calculated over its entire life cycle, from mine to scrapyard. I cannot lay my hands on the figures, but I understand that at least a third of the energy consumed by a train occurs in mining and refining the raw materials and construction of the vehicles. Large amounts of energy are used to just to dig out and transport the minerals and convert the ore to aluminium metal, while aluminium welding is also an energy-intensive process. Aluminium mining is not environmentally friendly. Similar considerations apply to electrification infrastructure and battery technologies. As regards cost, around a third of the total is for the capital costs of the rolling stock. This is usually reckoned to be fully amortised after 20 years, ...

The recent large scale shutdowns on French railways have been variously attributed to hostile action, terrorists, leftist agitators and Russians, but similar incidents have occurred by accident. A few years ago a small fire in an equipment cupboard shut down train services over a wide area around Gothenburg, and it took a fortnight to get things back to normal. A couple of weeks ago there was the worldwide dislocation caused by an upgrade of Windows computer systems which went wrong. Similar large scale disruption to electronic systems can also be due to natural events such as solar storms. Total shutdown of tills in shops throughout Sweden are common, apparently because of a failures of the VAT central computer system. Critical infrastructure such as transport, water supply, mains drainage, electricity and gas are all vulnerable.  Until a few decades ago, the signals and points at Brighton were controlled from a signal box at the end of the platforms. If anything went wrong, the s...

I noticed that there has been a flurry of discussion recently about what is known as Modern Monetary Theory  (MMT)). It strikes me as a bit half-baked but the proponents of MMT may have a point. The usual view is that governments collect tax and spend it to pay for their activities. I believe this is exactly the wrong way round. As I understand it, official money is created when government spends it into circulation to cover its expenses. The money must then be withdrawn from circulation through the tax system, so as to complete the cycle and prevent the undue increase in the quantity of money which leads to a general increase in prices as the value of money falls. Now, it is essential to remember that one of the core functions of governments is to protect land rights and provide what is needed to make land habitable and productive, thereby creating sustaining its value. The government‛s primary duties are to defend the realm, protect land titles, make justice available to the...

A handful of overdue policy reforms would alleviate many of the long standing problems that afflict the British economy. This are Rationalisation of property taxation including Reform of the Council Tax Abolition of Stamp Duty Abolition of Capital Gains Business Rates to annual assessments and will with fixed equipment, buildings and plant being ignored in the valuation.  Phasing out of VAT Significant raising of thresholds for income tax and NI contributions. Scrapping of VAT over a couple of years; it is damaging, inefficient and a solid obstacle to growth.  Even if these changes were revenue-neutral, great benefits would follow. Of course, even though Labour has a huge majority in parliament, little or none of this will happen.

For the second time this week, trains on many routes in the west of Sweden have been cancelled due to high winds: this happened on Sunday morning (7 July) and again this afternoon (10 July). Apparently there is a risk of trees falling on the overhead electrification cables, and of the cables themselves getting blown down. The cables come down regularly; a couple of times a week, it is said. I have personally been caught up in two incidents. In the first, the train was stuck in a forest for four hours  when the wires came down. This was on a lovely afternoon in July and passengers could enjoy the sun and opportunity to walk their dogs. The stay in the forest was so long because it took two hours to couple a rescue locomotive to the train. A month ago the passengers were ordered off a Copenhagen to Gothenburg train because the wires had been stolen, and that journey ended up with an overnight stay in a hotel. Which raises two questions. Why are trees allowed to grow where they a...

The Stadler class 93 locomotive is a tri mode (diesel/25kV electric/battery) unit intended for both freight and passenger train haulage. Its power is given as 6200 hp on electric traction, 1250 hp on diesel and 540 hp on batteries. Its main purposes is to haul high speed intermodal freight while avoiding diesel running under the wires, with diesel and battery power for the ʻlast mileʼ. This looks good but is exactly wrong. It is, presumably, a very expensive piece of kit, each one probably costing over £3 million. It that looks like it is brutal on the track - tiny wheels and a 21 ton axle load are a recipe for heavy wear.  Freight trains should not be traveling at high speeds. It wastes energy and damages the track - the modern container carriers with small wheels are track-bashers, and modern passenger trains are also destructive to the point that it is becoming a real problem; the poor state of the track is evident on, for instance, the Great Western Main Line.  Electricit...

Last Sunday was a Muslim festival, and the Gothenburg city council allowed this to be celebrated with public prayers in Slottskogen, one of the city parks. There was a huge turnout, as the picture shows. How many women can you count?

I intend to vote for Reform (if the postal voting form arrives in time) but their policies are not up to dealing with the problems that face the country. These have their roots in the theories that have been current for the past 100 years in the departments of economics in Oxbridge and the London School of Economics, and which circulate within the civil service and and the government. Until these theories are recognised as bogus, policies which might succeed are simply not available to whoever gets elected.  At their root is the notion that government revenue should be raised primarily from taxes on productive and legal economic activity. This is ultimately self-defeating, since it leads to a death spiral. The present mania for bringing ever more people into the country is a desperate attempt to escape the inevitable. The system was never viable, and much government spending has had to be financed by inflation; sterling has lost 98% of its value since the end of the war, and there...

Revolution VLR is a project for ultra lightweight trains for use on routes where traffic is relatively light. It is described as “an innovative, lightweight, cost-effective rail vehicle that provides a compelling alternative to operating traditional heavy rail vehicles on branch lines. Its low mass reduces all aspects of operating costs and can significantly improve the business cases for line reopenings and extensions, enhancing local connectivity. RVLR’s innovative design combines automotive and rail technologies to provide an attractive, environmentally and economically sustainable product that can be deployed rapidly. RVLR facilitates modal shift and enhanced public transport connectivity. It supports a more affordable, greener future for our railways.” I look at this and scratch my head. What were the designers thinking of? It is a curious design, with vehicles only 18.5 metres long (when the standard mark 1 length of 20 metres can run over the entire British system and another me...

Once upon a time, a train ticket was a small piece of thick card which you bought at the station when you wanted to travel. You would turn up a few minutes early in case there was a queue at the ticket office, which was staffed by a human being who knew his job. Then you waited for your train and made your journey. And that was all. Nowadays, except for local journeys, you have to book in advance and have to travel in a particular train. You might have to buy the ticket on a mobile phone, or else you will have to negotiate a terminal with a confusing and poorly designed touch screen, with every train company having a different layout and programme flow. There is a bewildering variety of tickets and prices. In the latest version of the Swedish Railways (SJ) booking system, there is no means of changing your booking or getting a refund if something crops up. You have to allow an extra half hour or more to be certain of catching the train you have booked for. The railways have adopted one...

The ultimate net zero lunacy is probably de-carbonising and trying to electrify the entire railway system.  In the first place, the railways in total are not a major consumer of energy. Secondly, a huge amount of energy used by the railways is embodied in structures, rolling stock and electrification equipment. Thirdly, any measures that make the use of railways unnecessarily expensive encourage the use of less efficient alternatives.  An immense amount of energy is used up in the manufacture of aluminium railway vehicles and the massive steel electrification gallows and goalposts used to hold up the copper wires, which also takes a lot of energy to mine and refine. Oddly enough the railways of sixty years ago were probably more energy efficient. Locomotives and rolling stock were kept in use for nearly double as long as today, passenger trains ran at 75 mph and freight trundled along at 15 mph on its own lines, the aim being to keep the trains rolling as far as possible on as...

Brexits misslyckande ska inte vara en varning mot Swexit. Strax efter Brexit 2020 kom Corona-inlåsningen vilken visade sig senare onödig men ekonomin blev allvarligt skadade. Efter kom Sunaks helikopterpengar som är huvudorsaken till den nuvarande pågående prishöjningar. Vi också förstår att den brittiska regeringen och statsförvaltningen alltid var strängt emot Brexit. De ville inte ta fördelar av de möjligheter för verklig frihandel och skattereformer; man kan säger t o m sabotage. Storbritannien kunde ha blivit av med den skadliga Eurotax - MOMS som vid 20 % krymper ekonomin ner åtminstone 5% BNP. Storbritannien liknar en fånge som stannar kvar i sin cell när han har släpptes. Förmodligen vill den Brittiska regelklassn inte göra ändringarna eftersom de hoppas att Storbritannien ska återgå EU. Swexit ska vara målet men efter bör vi dra nytta av alla möjligheter inkl skattereformer och verklig frihandel (vilket inte är samma sak som frihandelsavtal).

Regnbåge flaggar på fordon. Behövs inte. De retar upp folk i onöd, särskilda muslimer för att det går emot sina tro. Det finns tillräckliga regnbåge och flaggor och varianter i stan under Pride månad. Det skulle bli bättre att lägga er uppenbarliga bristande resurser och pengar till rengöring av GS spårvagnars smutsiga ytor med hänsyn till de ljusmålade ytor övanpå fönster. Och att fixa nummerskyltar. Svar från Västtrafik Tack för att du hörde av dig till oss på Västtrafik! Att ställa sig bakom budskapet om allas lika värde är en självklarhet för oss. Alla ska känna sig välkomna i kollektivtrafiken. Genom att flagga tar vi ställning för det färgerna symboliserar – inkludering och mångfald. Västtrafik står bakom West Prides vision om en jämlik och inkluderande värld fri från fördomar och diskriminering. Om du har en specifik klagomål på nogon buss som inte funkar eller är trasig kan du såklart återkomma till oss med en specifik tur det gäller på och vi kollar närmare på det. Skulle ...

There is some bad science driving the current policies of fresh lockdowns and vaccine passports. The initial virus was indeed dangerous because it had crossed from wild animals to humans. This happened probably due to research which nobody should be doing (as in The Plague Dogs published in 1977 and written by Richard Adams, author of the better known Watership Down ). My guess is that the vaccine was a wild one which had been brought in for study to the research laboratory. My further guess is that it escaped not because anyone caught it, but because the laboratory animals are routinely sold off to the local market traders instead of being incinerated, as a perk of the job for under-paid technicians. Although this seems to have been a laboratory-induced pandemic, poor agricultural and food handling practices are another important contributor to pandemics generally, including living too close to animals and crowding animals together unnaturally. Once pathogens get into human populatio...

The government of country X subsidises widget production by giving its taxpayers' money to Widgeprod Inc. Its taxpayers are the losers. Widgeprod then sells its subsidised widgets in country Y, which makes them good value to those who can buy them. Widgeproduits SA is threatened with the loss of most of its business and persuades the its own government to put a tariff on everything from country X. This keeps Widgeproduits AS in business but everyone else in country Y paying through the nose for all imports from country Y. The alternatives would have been for Widgproduits AS to side-step the competition by making something else (these situations rarely develop overnight) or cease production. The money customers save on the cheaper Widgeprod goods is spent elsewhere into the economy of country Y, and the foreign exchange that flows into country X is ultimately spent in country Y. The subsidy is a net economic loss to country X. The punitive tariffs are a loss to country ...

Part 1s and 2 seem to have disappeared from the website of the Land Value Taxation Campaign but you can see them on YouTube. The website has been re-designed and much improved, but there are still a few issues to be resolved.